White Mountains

Very enjoyable, from the beautiful cinematography (every film should be set in the snow) to the riveting chase scenes, from the fascinating locale (camels!) to how the film played on my emotions. Normally tonal inconsistency can irk me but here it just added to the flurry of emotions, and though I could understand someone finding the film a bit lacking and needing padding out ultimately the film's simplicity was part of its appeal to me. Wonderful stuff.

Considering the background history, this has immense importance as Kyrgyzstan's cinema, and its stripped down 63 running time would have allowed it to keep the barest essentials of its tale while paradoxically expanding upon it. Sadly, regardless of its country of origin, it's a disinteresting film whose skeletal structure leads to little of interest.